Prosopagnosia

There was nothing keeping him on the colony, so one
night he got out of bed far too early for it to be late anymore, and he headed
down to the docking areas where the spaceships passed by on their way to
somewhere else. There he arrived at a small waiting area that served as tavern,
information portal and intersystem trading hub. He located the crew from that
strange ship that would sometimes stop by, asked them again about the terms of
the contracts they were offering, and this time he took a seat and listened
hard.

It was a well-known contract in the manner that such
things become known, spoken of in rumors and hushed half-beliefs. Lazar knew few
people who had truly investigated all its murky corners.

The recruiters were friendly without being imposing.
They gave him the impression that they would be happy to have him and remain
happy once he had signed up but would not take it personally if he did not. They
also gave him the impression that they knew where they were headed, which made
them all the more appealing.

Their contract was remarkably clear in tone. It was
for a whole year, that odd span which has become actual time without yet being
truly long. A year was the smallest unit with which to measure the increments of
one's life; and so it counted towards the future without eating it up.

During that year Lazar would not be allowed to leave
the ship on his own volition. Were he to attempt disembarkment, the contract
stated he would be confined to his quarters until such time as he could be given
passage to a nearby colony, while the recruiters calmly stated that he would, in
fact, be confined to a container and jettisoned into fucking space at the
pilot's whim. This was not a contract for uncommitted people, nor with those who
retained any longing for their past.

He would sever all ties with his old life. There would
be no communication with anyone on this colony, or anyone anywhere else unless
required for a pilot-sanctioned mission. The ship would undock, with Lazar on
board, and that would be it.

During this year he would be paid a fortune in salary.
Word also had it that the capsuleer who ran the crew could be extremely generous
in all those little ways that matter infinitely more when your daily routine is
dictated by others.

After the first year he would be free to go. When he
asked if recruits tended to leave, the recruiters shrugged and admitted almost
reluctantly that nobody ever did. People, they said, found something on this
ship they were looking for, and they didn't want to ever let it go.

It suited him well.

They gave him a datapad with tests and watched as he
answered the questions, some of which were stranger than others and a good part
of which seemed related to personal identity. He handed back the datapad to a
recruiter who looked it over, smiled and handed it back with an offer. The offer
was in ISK. He had never had ISK before.

He signed the datapad with his autograph and his
personal key, and he handed it back, and he left his old life for good.

***

The ship was an industrial, five hundred strong,
although Lazar was told that he likely wouldn't see but a fraction of it at the
outset. He was confined to a particular section of the ship where he would work,
live and interact with the same limited subsection of the crew. He had not been
allowed to bring any personal possessions, but the ship was well-stocked in both
entertainment material and basic necessities. Many of the onboard systems were
automated, even the personal hygiene ones in the living quarters, which Lazar
suspected was a welcome novelty for a ship used to taking long trips in deep
space. The lack of amenities annoyed him at the outset - he wanted to shave his
face with a blade, but there were no razors and, oddest of all, there were no
mirrors on the ship, either - but if that was the worst he had to suffer on this
strange trip, he expected he could handle it.

He met his crew section every morning at reveille.
Strengthened in his intent to accept whatever the journey brought him, he found
himself more affable than he'd been in years, and made quick friends with most
of them. One in particular caught his attention, though he tried to rein himself
in. She had long, reddish hair, thick lips and a voice that slid gently into his
ears. Her name was Reania.

She agreed with him that the ship's automation took a
little getting used to, and that the lack of mirrors was frankly bizarre, but
added that the capsuleer in charge of this ship was in fact a very nice man. He
had his kooky side, as she called it, but they all did, and his crew served him
without compunction. He also had a lot of money - again, as they all did - and
spent a great deal of it on this ship and its crew. The others, busy with eating
but apparently listening in, nodded in gentle approval. Lazar wondered whether
he would ever meet this man, but asked whether he would ever meet the rest of
the crew. Reania said that eventually he would, after the initial adjustment
period had passed. Long trips took getting used to, and they did not want him to
get lost in this life before he had truly found his bearings. He did not ask
anything else. She smiled at him, but she was not smiling.

That night he started getting sick. It began with a
slight vertigo and a photosensitivity that turned increasingly vicious as the
night wore on, until the point where even the gloom from the stars' faint halos,
penetrating through the darkness of his covered windows, felt like needles
slowly piercing his brain. The vertigo forced him to keep his eyes open - he was
absolutely not going to run to the bathroom and vomit, not in the dark - and he
spent his time counting the luminous shapes that appeared to slither over his
bedroom floor, like oil over metal. When he moved his gaze up at the wall, the
shapes followed.

Somewhere in the middle of the whorl, he fell asleep.

***

The next morning people kept asking him how he was
doing. He reasoned that he must really look sick, but without any mirrors he
couldn't tell for sure.

The day went on and was followed by others. He did his
chores, which were simple and appeared to be aimed at gauging his talents rather
than putting him to a proper day's amount of work. The crewmembers who worked
alongside him kept an eye on his progress, but they were gentle enough about it,
and so forthright in their watch, that he did not feel belittled nor ashamed.

He got to know them by their first names, them and
most of the others he saw in this enclosed new life, and after the ship made its
next stop somewhere in the deep of space he noticed that several of them had
disappeared. He asked around, but received only smiles.

The night hallucinations continued. Sometimes he
crawled to the toilet and vomited. He was glad for the lack of mirrors, for he
did really not want to see his face.

One time at lunch someone new sat next to him. He
hadn't yet met this person, but found him strangely familiar. The person greeted
Lazar cheerfully by name, and Lazar ransacked his memory for the same, but came
up empty.

"Who are you?" Lazar said at last, with what he
assumed was a fairly silly grin.

"Oh, I'm Jatek."

Lazar said, half to himself, "Hey, that's the name of
one of our guys who left recently."

The man said, "Yeah, that's me."

This was surprising to Lazar, who had gotten to know
Jatek. "No, you're not," he said.

"Why not?"

This was even more surprising. "Well ..." Lazar began.
"You don't look anything like him."

"What size was he?" the man said, standing up.

Lazar looked him over. "Yours, but-"

"What build?"

"Yours. And you're wearing clothing similar to his,
and you probably have the same shoe size as well," Lazar said as the man sat
back down. He leaned in and added with a whisper, "But here's a telling little
detail. You don't have his face."

"So?" the man said, with a puzzled and amused
expression on those strange features.

Lazar blinked at him. He muttered, "I don't know what
to say to that."

The man nodded - still with that amused face that
Lazar half wanted to smash in with a goddamn rock - and went back to eating his
lunch.

Lazar remained in his seat and resumed his own meal,
which had lost most of its taste. He shot the man a look every now and then, but
tried to focus on the positive things about this situation: He was happy here.
He was free of the migraine, for the moment. And although his stomach was a
little shaky, no less after this little act, he was keeping his food down.

Until the door opened and another person walked in,
wearing different clothing and made of a different build, and walking even with
a different gait, but possessing the exact same face as the Jatek pretender.

Lazar rushed out and barely made it to the bathroom
before losing his lunch.

***

He spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, waking only
from his doze when Reania came over to check on him. They had become close
friends, or as much as one can get when adjusting to a new life and trying not
to fall for one's coworkers. When she saw the state he was in, she immediately
took over the flat. This included taking his dirty laundry off various available
surfaces and having it cleaned, ordering the AC to air out the place (and
ordering Lazar not to shut it off again), sending the cleaner bugs to take care
of spatters from the most recent raspy dry heave, and sorting out a proper warm
meal. Snacks were always available to the crew - this was one of those uncommon
ships where practically nothing was rationed - but food had to be requested, as
private quarters had no facilities to make it. Reania left and returned shortly
after with something that Lazar thought smelled almost as nice as she did. They
ate in the living room, him sitting on the sofa, her on a chair that faced him.

He got the food down, eventually. She sat there
patiently, chatting with him in amicable fashion and doing a good job of making
him feel neither alone nor helpless. To his relief she did not ask him what was
wrong, for he could not truly have told her.

After the meal he was overcome with the calming warmth
of a body nourishing itself. He ran out of energy even to talk, but even so he
did not want Reania to leave him. She seemed to sense this and moved closer,
sitting beside him and keeping up a slow murmur about her time on the ship and
the sights she'd seen; stations, nebulas, anything but the present.

In a quiet moment he asked if they could just lie
down. They did, there on the sofa.

For the longest time he didn't speak, not wanting to
disturb this bubble of niceness and normality in which he was resting. But the
mind never stops, and eventually he had to ask.

"Did you see Jatek and Kralen today?"

"Yes," she said.

He asked, with the tiny glimmer of stupid hope, "Oh,
so they're back from the station?"

She said, "Well, yeah, silly. Jatek even told me he
sat with you at lunch today."

Lazar closed his eyes tight and lay very still, hoping
Reania wasn't going to ask, but certain that she would.

She didn't.

Eventually he took a deep breath and said, "Do you see
nothing wrong with them?"

"No," she said. "I don't."

He took another deep breath, and another. Eventually
he fell asleep.

***

They stopped off again, this time for a few days. More
new faces, all the same old face.

***

He truly felt like he was losing his mind, and he
found himself idly wondering if he should kill them all or merely kill himself.
At mealtimes he avoided everyone. Someone spoke to him unexpectedly and he was
so startled that he spilled food over them. He left immediately, because if he
had not, he honestly would have fallen to the floor and cried.

Sleep was harder to come by, though the worst of the
headaches had passed.

He did not dare say anything to anyone because he
truly did not know if he was himself any longer, and if he started to yell and
scream at those strange faces, it wouldn't matter either way: He would have
become a madman. Even if he was right, he would have lost his mind.

They suffered an attack, in one losec system, and this
is what wrecked him: He was bloody useless. Everyone stood their ground and did
the work required, but Lazar did not. He couldn't face working beside those
people. He remained at his post and he responded when he couldn't avoid it, but
it was clear to him and certainly to anyone around him that he had flaked out.
They said nothing to him, which only made it worse.

The ship took to the nearest station for repairs.
While it was docked Lazar aimlessly wandered its corridors, not knowing even
what he was anymore - certainly not a proper crewman, and barely a human being -
and only came to a stop when his legs would no longer carry him.

He rested against a wall, eyes closed. The thrum of
the ship was different when docked: not quiet, but more deeply throbbing, as
from potential rather than motion. It was so strange to stop, but not even his
next steps seemed real enough to make effort.

There were footsteps. He hoped he wouldn't have to
talk.

He cracked an eye open and saw another one, the same
visage as all the others; although on this one the face seemed entirely natural
and a perfect fit to his body.

The wanderer asked if he was okay. Lazar nodded.

Then the stranger with the strange face did something
that amazed Lazar. He knelt down and hugged him.

Lazar was too tired even to sob, so he sighed, again
and again.

The man said, "We are all the same here. We all live
this same life. Forever," and as creepy as it was, it was calming, too. Lazar
found himself loving this man's voice, his support, and his apparent sanguinity
of mind; for either he had already had his own face changed, like everyone else,
and had simply dealt with it, or he hadn't had it altered and was now
supporting someone like Lazar who, to him, must appear utterly mad.

Lazar rose from the man's grasp and sighed again,
nodding at him. He tried to get a grip on himself.

The man said something like, "You're going to be
okay," and Lazar didn't hear if it was a question or a statement, but he closed
his eyes and nodded again. He heard the man walk away. As the steps receded it
occurred to him that he hadn't even thanked the guy, so he made himself open his
eyes, opened his mouth, and looked in the direction of the footfalls. He caught
the briefest of glimpses as the man walked around a bend in the corridor before
disappearing from view. The back of his head had a neural socket in it.

Lazar made his way home. Everyone on this ship, he was
coming to realize, had been kind to him from day one. Everyone was supportive.
Whatever this was, and whether or not they were doing it to him, they truly
cared.

He had just been comforted by a capsuleer. He felt
like an infant, rocked to sleep by a burning red sun.

That night someone rang at his door. It was Reania.
She was there to comfort him, he said.

While they sat on the couch he admitted to her that he
was wallowing in misery.

She said that isolation did strange things to people's
minds. He said it couldn't be that; it could not just that.

Reania sighed. She said it was not.

"You're not mad," she said.

"What's going on?" he asked.

She closed her eyes.

He looked at her for a while. "You're not going to
answer," he said at last.

She shook her head.

"But it doesn't matter, because I'm on this ship for
good," he said quietly.

She nodded.

They sat for a while in silence. Eventually she got up
and said, in a teary whisper, "I'd better be going."

She laughed and cried at once, and went back to him,
stroking and kissing his head. Later they moved from the couch to the bed, and
even later, they eventually fell asleep.

***

The next morning he was determined: If this was
madness then he would ride it, like a comet among stars.

Every face he saw was the same face. But when he
returned home at night she was always there, and it kept him going, if not sane.

***

One night she said she would go away for a while, but
she would be back. He said yes.

She asked if he was alright. He said yes, and yes, and
yes.

He was riding the comet. Nothing else. He was in the
dead cold of space, waiting to burn up.

They made love again, for the last time.

***

He slept a lot. He lost count of time. Once he woke
up, sore and numb, and found it was three days later than he thought it had
been. But he felt at ease, and managed to enact some manner of balance in his
life. Everything happened for a reason.

They had to short up a bunch of damage after they got
ambushed. He pulled Jatek out of danger after a circuit board caught fire, and
promised himself he'd look into that; they were his responsibility. Kralen
bought the rounds afterwards, since he'd been the last crewman to vet his guns
before activation.

Eventually she returned. They met in the cafeteria,
and ate, and after work they went their separate ways until the very end of the
day, when she came to his quarters. She had an access pad and let herself into
the dark room. He heard her come.

She walked quietly into the bedroom and laid down with
him. She started to do things, but he stopped her.

She pulled back, apparently thinking he didn't want
to, but she was wrong. He said, "I have to do one thing first," reached out and
turned up a single light from a single lamp. Its faded brightness was like that
of a setting sun, and it illuminated her new face.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked, with that old
voice.

"The light stays on," he said, and reached for her
hand again. She leaned down and kissed his fingers, then leaned in a little
closer.

When they did it, he looked deep into her eyes. He saw
his reflection, deep in those pools of darkness, and it was her own face. He
whispered, "Yes."